This past Saturday morning, I found myself at the kickoff of something incredible. It wasn’t the launch of a political campaign whose candidate can fulfill all of my quixotic dreams. It wasn’t a book launch or the first leg of a book tour or really anything that has to do with words. No, I was there for the robots.
The robots? Aren’t you a book person? Someone whose news intake isn’t limited to Wired and Popular Science?
Yes, yes, and yes. But the world works much better when we collaborate, when we celebrate and support each other’s passions. It is so much more fun to be well-rounded; there are so many more conversations you can join and people with whom you can connect.
Case in point: One of the most unique books I read in 2013 was Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, which marries programming, data visualization, and Google to brick-and-mortar bookstores. Astute literary allusions are always welcome in books; insightful scientific or mathematical references and metaphors, due to their rarity, make me giddy. Writing is incredibly richer when it draws not just on the literary canon, but also on the theories, laws, and principles that quietly make the world go ’round.
All of which is to say that aside from the fact that I am not a STEM major, I’m pretty much the ideal FIRST alumna. FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. Its four programs, which are divided by age, pose a robotics challenge each year to primary and secondary school teams across the country and even the world.
FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is the flagship high school division. Each January, amid rampant speculation and increasing excitement, a new game is presented. Teams then have six weeks to design, build, and test a robot that they will use in one or more regional competitions held late February through late March. Let me repeat their timeframe: six weeks.
The game changes every year, but it always involves manipulating some object (frisbees, foam balls, inner tubes in a variety of geometric shapes, PVC tetrahedrons, and so on) across an approximately 27 ft x 54 ft field in order to score points. Games are played by competing alliances of three robots each; alliances work together to score points and to prevent the opposing alliance from scoring. It all culminates at the end of April, when regional winners from around the world converge at Championships to battle for eternal robotics glory. Teams that consistently make it to Championships are tracked and envied just like any high performing sports team.
One end of the 2013 field.
Besides being the “varsity sport for the mind,” FIRST inspires cult-like loyalty and enthusiasm — which is why I’ve continued to attend kickoff post-high school graduation. Our tournaments are akin to conventions, with costumes and between-match macarenas. Imagine the Super Bowl spread out over three days and you’ll understand the excitement, energy, and emotion surrounding our tournaments. I am far more passionate about my high school robotics team (or even the Montreal team that won Rookie of the Year at the 2011 Championships, during which I stalked them shamelessly) than I am about any athletic one. I will scream my team number because a FRC match is a test of your brainchild, not a minefield of concussions.
I don’t normally accept homework from people who are not my teachers, but Dean Kamen, the founder of FIRST, is an exception. For the past few years, he has been urging those of us involved in FIRST to “make it loud,” and I am more than happy to do so. FIRST was easily one of the highlights of my high school career, and I imagine many of the over 70,000 FRC students across 2,850 teams feel the same.
Even though FRC was largely my introduction to copy editing and HTML rather than computer science or mechanics, it was still my way of developing the most rudimentary of engineering vocabularies. Participating in an FRC team meant I didn’t spend my days surrounded by budding English and politics majors. I knew a thousand ways to find book recommendations; I wasn’t going to learn about drivetrains outside of FRC.
I think everyone should love FIRST. I think everyone should attend regionals and mentor teams — even if you mentor the communications/marketing group, rather than the programmers. Mostly, though, I think everyone should have an obsession that’s just a little bit outside of their comfort zone. I know I’ve found mine.
